To escape the storm, Manchester United sent Mason Greenwood to sunnier climes.
Redemption – given the harrowing footage that will forever remain – will never be the right word. But in the search for a way out of an almost impossible situation, those who make the decisions at Old Trafford chose to head down a route not many would have plotted.
Getafe is a two-and-a-half-hour flight and a world away from the Manchester goldfish bowl.
An unfashionable club based in the middle of a nondescript residential area on the southern outskirts of Madrid, their compact stadium, the Coliseum Alfonso Perez, has three sides without a roof, let alone a leaking one.
There is no megastore, only a boxroom-sized club shop on the ground floor of an apartment block over the road. Every decision, every performance, is not obsessed over by the media and a demanding global fanbase.
Only for the visit of La Liga’s giants do crowds approach the 15,000 mark. There is no history of major success, with a quarter-final appearance in the 2008 UEFA Cup as good as it has got. Until last summer, Getafe had no social media account. What it did have, however, was the ability to tick boxes in what was a complex situation.
In January 2022 and at the age of 20, Greenwood was already a first-team regular at one of world football’s biggest names. Having come through the academy, the Bradford-born striker, a lethal finisher, had netted 17 times in the 2019-20 season and had already picked up an England cap.
Then came the fall. Early on a Sunday morning, audio, video and pictures were posted on Instagram. In one graphic clip, a man could be heard shouting at his alleged victim to 'move your f****** legs you'. When the woman said that she did not want sex, the man
Read on m.allfootballapp.com